SCRUTINY

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said lawmakers intend to probe President Trump’s response to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. In an interview with The Washington Post, Schiff said lawmakers on the committee “will be delving further into the murder of Khashoggi” and examining the intelligence community’s full assessment of the killing in order to determine if Trump downplayed the facts in order to protect Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. “Then it will be quite clear whether the president is relying on the intelligence community and our best source of information or whether the president is representing something very different,” Schiff told the Post. The goal of the investigation, he said, is to “provide some accountability if the president is representing evidence that we know to be untrue and putting the country at risk.” While the CIA has reportedly concluded that Mohammed ordered the killing of Khashoggi, Trump has repeatedly dismissed that claim and suggested the CIA has not yet definitively identified a culprit. On Thursday, he defended the Crown Prince against the allegations and suggested “the world” should be held accountable for Khashoggi’s death because, as he said, it is “a very vicious place.”